" God confirmed at the retreat the call we have felt to work with street kids in Brazil. We want to simply share God's love with them. Our heart is to make relationships with them, build trust, and share with these kids, who society has never valued, that they are incredibly valuable to God. We want to give them an opportunity to receive life skills to help them become self-sufficient. Most importantly we want to introduce them to the One who loves them so much (no matter what they have done) that He would rather die than live without them.

 

Since being home from the JDR, God has opened the doors to the steps that we felt were next for us. Those three steps were to become more involved with missions at church, work with at-risk youth here, and go to a children-at-risk missions school.

 

We have taken over some of the missions department at our church. We are now the ones who are the contacts between the church and our missionaries. It has been such a joy to be able to encourage and bless those already in the field. We are also privileged to be able to make known their prayer needs to our church family. Our hope is that our church becomes a solid support for missionaries we support.

 

God has also opened the doors for us to attend a Love and Justice Missions School. It has a specific focus on ministry with women and children at risk. These include street kids, trafficking, abuse, etc. We are hugely blessed that God called us to a geographical area that has this school locally.

 

We are beginning to teach life skills to foster kids who are getting ready to go from the foster system to independent living. We have also been contacted by the state of Idaho (where we live) to mentor young people who have left the foster system and have no one. These young people have no family or support at all. We are so excited to be able to share God's love with them.

 

Most importantly, God is teaching us what it is to live in a place of constant intimacy with Him. Neither of us have any interest in going into the mission field without having a lifestyle of remaining in intimacy with God. We want to hear His heart for every person we encounter. We want to know His agenda and not try to create our own. We want to be filled so full with the love and presence of our amazing Father that everywhere we go, whether in Idaho or Brazil, we can't help but leak that on everyone we come into contact with. Those forgotten by this world are incredibly valuable to God. What a joy that God is letting us partner with Him to go get them!

We are still feeling called to be senders and mobilizers right now, but we also feel that we will be goers someday. So, we are thankful for this season to gain training and experience with what we feel called to do overseas. The retreat was so helpful in leading us to determine what these "next steps" of preparation would be.

We can't thank you enough for this last weekend. It was more than we could have hoped for."